Nvidia GTX Titan graphics card announced

Nvidia has announced the GTX Titan, its latest high-end graphics card which is based on supercomputer technology

Nvidia has detailed its latest high end graphics card, the GTX Titan, confirming its existence with some impressive numbers that should cement its position as the world's fastest GPU.

Built around the GK110 Tesla technology first used in the Titan supercomputer - hence the name - the GTX Titan is Nvidia's most powerful graphics card to date, with a whopping 2,688 CUDA cores and 7.1 billion transistors, which produce 4,500 Gigaflops of processing power. Each card comes with 6GB of GDDR5 RAM, running along a 384-bit interface which should be more than sufficient for playing the latest games at above HD resolution. It's DirextX 11.1 compatible, so should support all the latest graphics tweaks such as tessellation, and Nvidia's own PhysX physics effects.

Designed as a single-GPU replacement for the current top-end GTX 690, which is actually two GTX 680 cores bolted to one PCB, the GTX Titan promises improved performance while using less power and producing less heat. A redesigned cooler with an extended aluminium heat stack dissipates heat faster than Nvidia's current design, while the 90mm fan is tied to both RPM and voltage control to more accurately determine when to kick in. With a TDP of 250w, you'll certainly need it.

SLI is fully supported, so if you have a capable power supply and bottomless pockets you could potentially run multiple Titans for high frame rates even at multi-monitor resolutions. Although Nvidia has yet to share exact benchmark results, some rough figures suggest games like Crysis 3, Far Cry 3 and Max Payne 3 can expect roughly twice the performance over a GTX690 setup.

Perhaps more exciting news is the addition of GPU Boost 2.0, an evolution of the software introduced with Nvidia's 600-series graphics cards. Built into the video driver, GPU Boost 2.0 will let Titan owners overclock and olvervolt their cards, with higher limits than with previous cards and optimisations for water-cooling setups.

It will also allow you to "overclock" your display, running it at a faster sync rate than it officially supports to squeeze out some extra frames per second. As an example, a monitor rated for 60Hz refresh only could run at up to 80Hz, meaning twenty extra frames per second are being displayed.

The one sticking price will almost certainly be the price - Nvidia would only confirm RRP pricing with us today, as it will be up to its hardware partners to set their own prices when the cards launch later this week, but you'll easily be paying over £800 per card. We'll have to wait until then to see whether the benchmark scores can back up Nvidia's claims that the Titan is the fastest card around, but the early indications look promising.